Poet, memoirist, and audio writer Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawai’i and grew up there and in Los Angeles. He earned his BA from Pomona College and his MFA from the University of California-Irvine, where he studied with the poets C.K. Williams, Howard Moss, and Charles Wright. His poetry collections are Yellow Light (1982), The River of Heaven (1988), which received the Lamont Poetry Prize and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Coral Road (2011). In non-fiction, he has published The Mirror Diary (2017) and Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaiʻi (1995), perhaps his best known work. His work has been recognized with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a frequent contributor of audio articles to Soundstage! Ultra and lives in Eugene, where he is Distinguished Professor at the University of Oregon.